Chairman—Sir Winston Churchill
I know that someone who was voted by BBC viewers as the “Greatest Briton” may be a controversial choice, but his success was down to his ability to grasp issues, his decisiveness, his experience, a keen ambition, luck and sheer drive and hard work. All of which makes him a perfect chairman. He’s not been without controversy; his attempt to fix the value of the Pound to the price of gold (the Gold Standard) was a financial disaster and in his early years, he was synonymous with a military debacle at Gallipoli and suffered demotion because of it. This prize winning historian also said “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”. For that alone, he deserves his place.Sales Director—Bernie Ebbers
For entertainment value, Ebbers has to be here. Unorthodox, straight talking and religious (he would often start meetings with a prayer), Ebbers was responsible for the largest bankruptcy in history. Through the 1990s his telecommunications company WorldCom acquired smaller competitors and Ebbers was lauded for his $40bn takeover of competitor, MCI. In order to keep WorldCom’s share price artificially high, Ebbers instructed executives to exaggerate revenues and file false expenses during the dotcom collapse. This led to a collapse in share prices and the mega bankruptcy with shareholders and investors losing some $180bn. Ebbers was arrested and charged with 15 counts of fraud and felonies. He pled ignorance of financial matters, known as the “aw shucks” defence. It backfired when the jury at his trial didn’t believe him. He’s now serving a 25-year prison sentence.Finance Director—John Law
A Scot, Law was born in 1671 and he’s unique in managing to bankrupt a country. After studying banking, in 1708 he went to Paris and became a favourite of the duc d’Orleans, Phillipe II, who as Prince Regent ran France while Louis XV was a boy. Law tried to persuade the French to set up a national bank, an idea they rejected. But they allowed him to set up a private bank in which he sold shares at knockdown prices. He issued more shares than he had assets and saved it from a sudden run by obtaining a monopoly on land in Louisiana (he told investors it was covered in emeralds) and the profitable Canadian fur trade. Law then offered to pay off the French government’s debts. Charging them a lower interest he exchanged shares for gold. He made paupers into millionaires and when the bubble burst in 1720, turned millionaires into paupers. Shrewd investors had already salted away their gold and Law escaped to Brussels before the mob could catch up with him. He died poor in 1729.Marketing Director—Calisto Tanzi
As the man who built Italian food giant Parmalat from nothing into a multi-billion euro company, Tanzi (known as Don Calisto) could afford to be generous and he was. He bestowed gifts on charities and his home town of Parma, where he rescued the football club and restored the town’s basilica. The trouble was that the money wasn’t his. When the fraud came to light Tanzi admitted siphoning off €500m to finance other businesses. The most amazing thing is that it was all down to a forgery. In November 2003, when Parmalat couldn’t make a bond payment, auditors discovered a bank account supposed to contain €4bn, didn’t exist. All the paperwork was forged. Parmalat had been using this technique for 10 years. Don Calisto’s personality, his studiously built image, the Parmalat brand and his financial acumen enabled him to steal billions without authorities becoming suspicious.Managing Director—Baroness Thatcher
She may be the only person with the balls to stand up to Winston, but Baroness Thatcher is here through irony, as it was during her tenure as Prime Minister that Britain lost much of its manufacturing capacity. However, it’s likely business today would not be as healthy without her policies and the changes brought in by her government. Among the many controversies to afflict her government was the “Arms to Iraq” affair, where British military exports to Saddam Hussein’s regime were supported by soft government loans. Whatever the trials and tribulations, there’s no doubt that Baroness Thatcher would be a reforming managing director and God help those who get in her way.PR Director—Gerald Ratner
Ratner is probably the only person in this line-up who illustrates the dangers of the truth. Through the 1980s Ratner built his eponymous chain of jewellery and gift shops. Then he made what he thought would be a low-profile speech to the IoD, in which he said: “We do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray… all for £4.95. People say, ‘How can you sell this for such a low price?’ I say, ‘because it’s total crap’.” What he didn’t appreciate was that in the audience were journalists who reported the speech. Ratner added that some of his jewellery was “cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich, but wouldn’t last as long”. Sales and the share price plummeted and the company nearly went bankrupt. Ratner resigned and the company changed its name.Some 300 stores closed. Undeterred, Ratner now runs a successful online jewellery store.
Property Director—Peter Rachman
Many large businesses have a property director, who always seems remarkably well paid and senior. Peter Rachman, though, was a vicious landlord who in the 1950s and 1960s exploited immigrant workers by buying cheap houses and dividing them up into squalid apartments. He victimised and bullied his tenants and those behind on their rent were treated ruthlessly. His activities were so well known that the term “Rachmanism” was coined. On his death the practice declined, but we are seeing the signs of its return with the treatment of Eastern European workers who come to the UK to work on fruit farms and other labour intensive jobs.PR Director—Robert Maxwell
Born in Czechoslovakia in 1923, Maxwell was possibly the most disliked entrepreneur of modern times. Well known for gluttony and arrogance, he once landed his helicopter on the roof of his publishing conglomerate, the Mirror Group, and proceeded to urinate over the edge of the building. “That’s what I think of my readers,” he said. Despite being regarded by the government as “not fit to run a publicly quoted company” he built his empire into a substantial publishing force. It turned out this was kept afloat by plundering the company’s pension funds, to the tune of £400m. This came to light after his death, when he fell overboard from his yacht in strange circumstances. Thousands of employees lost their pensions, and after trials had found his family not guilty of fraud, the DTI reported on the collapse and accused Maxwell and his sons of acting “inexcusably”.The Middle Management
Every company has middle managers, itching with ambition and guile:Robert Aires
Aires’s main scam was simplicity itself; he registered the trademarks of company trading names before the companies involved thought of doing it themselves and then “invited” them to buy them from him. He liked his photograph taken outside the head offices of his victims, his trilby hat held at a jaunty angle. He also blackmailed companies over patents, but kept everything on a jovial basis, not taking offence if someone told him where to stick his trademark.Stephen Covey
Covey is not a liar, but he did write The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That’s a book behind which nearly every corporate bullsh***er hides. They usually don’t understand a word of it and only care that by displaying it in their office they will look good. For that alone Covey deserves a place in this hellish fictional corporation. In fact, I think most so-called business gurus should be included, then they can see what happens in the real world.Horatio Bottomley
Recognised as one of the greatest swindlers ever, Bottomley dealt in gullibility and naivety. A financier, he was made bankrupt over 50 times, yet managed to escape prosecution for many years and lived a very full and fruitful life. He was a fantastic orator and Edwardian Britain (still affected by class and status) swallowed his lies during his many court appearances, usually after being arrested for fraud when issuing shares in another improbable company. He even found time to become a Liberal MP and publish a populist newspaper (John Bull) where he plugged his various schemes. He eventually went to prison after being found guilty of running a sweepstake, along the lines of a Premium Bond, where he lined own his pockets instead of giving the money to help fund the British to win World War I. He died in 1932 while on stage at London’s Windmill Theatre.Simon Dally
A successful publisher at an early age, Dally had the ability to spot potential bestsellers. It was while working for prominent publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson that he embarked on a scheme to take over the company by bugging the offices of owner Lord Weidenfeld. After he was sacked from that job he decided it would be a good idea to raise some cash by stealing his neighbour’s library and then offer it for sale at Christie’s, the auction house. Unfortunately for Dally, Christie’s knew the library well having just valued it. They identified it as belonging to a Lord Keynes and called in the law. Dally escaped prosecution by accidentally shooting himself dead. Apparently he was awakened by the telephone and picked up a pistol (which he’d recently bought for protection) instead of the receiver. I wonder how they knew that?Ernest Hooley
Hooley was a serial fraudster who claimed he could fool anyone and had the ability to “sell them things they neither wanted nor needed”. He used his magnetic personality and financial acumen to found companies, some of which went on to be household names. He floated companies on the stockmarket including Singer and Raleigh Bicycles. He also bought the company that made Schweppes drinks and floated that. Perhaps his greatest triumph was his flotation of Dunlop. He bought them for £3m and borrowed the amount stipulated as the deposit then floated a public company. The proceeds of the flotation were used to pay the balance of the purchase price, after which he sold Dunlop into the newly floated company for £5 million, netting £2 million in the process, a colossal sum at the time. But he bribed peers to sit on his company boards and vote the way he wanted, but eventually his risks took their toll and he was declared bankrupt. To Hooley it was all a big game and he took it all in good humour. Through more bribes he became High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire. Eventually, though, the law caught up with him and he received a three-year prison sentence for another scam, this time involving cotton. He died in 1947, apparently penniless and regarded by his prosecutor as “the most genial, and the most able” person he ever prosecuted.David Lloyd George
The only Welshman to become British Prime Minister, Lloyd George was a particularly able politician who, on entering the house in 1890, was its youngest MP. He built his reputation by successfully attacking the Boer War as a waste of money and eventually became Prime Minster in 1916 after ousting the incumbent Asquith. He came through World War I to win another election and although his leadership was not without crises (especially in Ireland), it was the corrupt nature of his government that eventually saw his downfall. The opposition were able to prove that he had successfully sold knighthoods and peerages for money. By 1922 Lloyd George had collected £2m by this method. By carelessly rewarding a number of tax dodgers, convicted criminals and fraudsters, he exposed his corrupt ways and subsequently resigned in October 1922. His successor, Bonar Law, oversaw a new law that made selling titles illegal. This remains a theme as topical today (with the arrest of Lord Levy, the Labour Party fund-raiser) as it was then.This is an edited extract of Liar’s Paradise by Graham Edmonds, which is out now (published by Southbank Publishing).
